Week 10 Essay: Eskimos: Single Men, Wizards, and Paranormal

This week there were many reoccurring motifs in the unit Eskimo Folk Tales.  These motifs included unmarried men (in the beginning of just about every tale), shamans, and in some cases the undead or ghosts.  When going through the unit, one can see that all of the stories are single paged and not very long. They get straight to whatever point they are trying to make then it abruptly ends.  At first this kind of annoyed me while reading, but I had to remind myself that the tales were derived from oral stories.  I believe that since these stories stay as true to oral traditions as they can, explains the reoccurring themes.

Of the many stories that began with a man he was always unmarried and either a good or bad hunter.  Whether he could hunt was an important aspect to the Eskimos for they thrived on the animals they hunted.  Many times these men would have many brothers that either took care of him or competed him when it came to how much game they were able to obtain.  This was effective for Eskimo storytellers since this gave the audience a homely perspective when listening to this story around a fire.

Wizards, magic men, or shamans were prevalent in this unit as well.  They were mentioned many times in the text, but they were by far more prevalent in the images before the stories.  Many times you almost miss the images.  There were many that did no seem to pertain to the actual stories, and were just pieces of art the author presented.  I look at the wizards and shaman as their sort of religious belief system.  Majority of the time villagers went to the wizards for help and advice.  The wizards would consult on the "spirits" a lot of the time in order to know what to do.

                      Source          Wizards preparing for a "spirit fight."     I have no clue what this is.

Lastly, I feel like in todays society and culture we fear death (at least here in the US).  The Eskimo's, at least of this time, do not seem to have this belief system.  As explained in their creation story, The Coming of Men, A Long, Long While Ago, the first people created actually accepted the new concept of death in order to be privileged with light.  They believe that if one dies with a grudge on their heart that they were able to come back as a ghost and attack their enemies.  Much to my surprise there was a story where a man was able to bring back a zombie to attack one of his brothers.  I just feel like this unit was about more than just the stories themselves, they gave insight on how the Eskimo's routines and cultural beliefs.